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0 pointsAnthonyMouse6y ago0 comments

If you have two politicians, and one of them tells you everything is fine and we don't have to do anything, and the other says you're going to have to pay more today to prevent some hypothetical future badness tomorrow even though they can't demonstrate the badness until tomorrow, people are skeptical of the thing that costs them money. Even if it's true.

Then politicians want to get elected, so the one side moderates their position and the other doesn't.

It's one of the reasons carbon tax + dividend might actually have a chance. If the dividend only goes to humans but the tax is paid by both humans and corporations, and it's revenue neutral, then the average real person is getting back more than they're paying. That's the sort of thing people like.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

xyzzyz6y ago· 3 in thread

I don't think humans will get much back out of it. Most of what corporations are emitting is on behalf of the customers. All the cement factories that emit insane amounts of CO2 do it because that's what it takes to produce cement, which customers then buy. When carbon tax passes, the cement price will necessarily rise, which will offset some of the dividend gains. The exact amount of increase depends on the elasticity of the demand for concrete, but from what I can tell, there aren't really any substitutes for concrete that wouldn't also be hit by carbon tax (there's lumber, but most of what we currently build with concrete can already hardly be built with wood).

This is not to say that carbon tax wouldn't have intended results: it would indeed shift the consumption towards less carbon-intensive products. However, I don't expect that average carbon dividend will be significant.

AnthonyMouseOP6y ago

> Most of what corporations are emitting is on behalf of the customers.

You might go so far as to say that all of it is, but that's not the question. The question is, if e.g. concrete costs more due to the tax but we still need it, how much of the tax is passed on to consumers vs. coming out of corporate cash piles? If the answer is "anything less than 100% in all cases" then the difference is a net transfer from corporations to humans.

CuriousSkeptic6y ago

Also consider wealth difference. Wealthier spend more money than poor people, so even if just a tiny fraction of every dollar is passed back as dividends, the accumulative effect is to distribute wealth towards the poor.

tgsovlerkhgsel6y ago

Prices going up is less direct, and thus likely less on people's minds, than "I'm getting a check from the government every month".

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